Before Rush Limbaugh, Father Coughlin was America’s first demagogue of the airwaves

James T. Keane
February 19, 2021

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Obituaries for radio personality Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday after a lengthy battle with lung cancer, largely agreed that Limbaugh was a pioneer in the use of radio for a kind of political rhetoric that straddled the line between entertainment and deliberate incitement of hatred. His 32 years as host of “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” a radio program that was nationally syndicated and followed by millions, “transfigured him into a partisan force and polarizing figure in American politics. In many ways, his radio show was like the big bang of the conservative media universe,” Oliver Darcy wrote for CNN. Limbaugh “often waded into conspiratorial waters and generated controversy for hateful commentary on gender and race,” he added. “During the course of his career, Limbaugh started a number of fires with his commentary.”

Limbaugh was followed by others in radio and television and online who became his peers in partisan shock-jock “infotainment.” But it is a mistake to consider him the originator of the genre or style. He had his forebears, too, first among them the notorious “radio priest” of the 1930s and 1940s, the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin.


To read Father Coughlin’s articles and the transcripts of his radio broadcasts is to find tropes that have become all too familiar in recent years: a not-always-subtle anti-Semitism; a nativism combined with alarm in response to foreign invaders; open praise for dictators; “both-sides” arguments designed to excuse the policies of genocidal strongmen; the rhetoric of victimization served up to an audience of millions of whites; dog-whistles encouraging sedition and vigilantism; identification of Christianity as the true American religion; and, of course, histrionic claims of censorship when entities, both public and private, cut off his access to his public.

To read Father Coughlin’s articles and the transcripts of his radio broadcasts is to find tropes that have become all too familiar in recent years.

That last claim was often supported by the editors of America in the 1930s, part of an ongoing repartee between the magazine’s editors and the demagogic priest that warmed and cooled over many years, with Father Coughlin’s increasingly rabid anti-Semitism bringing virtually any mention of him in America to an end by the close of the Second World War. America’s editors also largely agreed with Father Coughlin’s position on the persecution of Catholics in Mexico by the regime in power, as well as his fervent anti-Communist stance (one matched by the editor in chief of America at the time, Wilfrid Parsons, S.J.).

Father Coughlin seemed at first to be on the path later taken by Bishop Fulton Sheen, a popular voice whose real appeal was to the religious sensibilities of his readers and listeners—both Catholic and not. According to Wallace Stegner, Father Coughlin had a “voice of such mellow richness, such manly, heart-warming confidential intimacy, such emotional and ingratiating charm, that anyone tuning past it almost automatically returned to hear it again.”

His original radio program “The Golden Hour of the Little Flower” and his best-selling newspaper Social Justice both had their roots in Catholic apologetics and devotional materials.

John LaFarge, S.J., later the editor in chief of America, wrote that Coughlin’s radio show “combined as did probably no Catholic program before or since the moving ingredients of sugary Eucharistic devotion, emotionally appealing sacred music, melodious oratory and a deep, passionate appeal to the inmost resentments of his forty million listeners in the United States and Canada, non-Catholic and Catholic alike.”

Forty million listeners would have been a third of the nation’s population in the mid-1930s, but that figure might also have been an understatement: His 1979 obituary in The New York Times claimed that at the height of his popularity, Father Coughlin was drawing a weekly audience of 90 million listeners. (O.K., that’s clearly an overstatement.) But there is no question he had a strong cult of personality surrounding him, as well as a huge and devoted following that included millions of Depression-era unemployed workers who saw him as the champion of the working man. It was a meteoric rise to fame for a man who only 10 years before had been appointed the pastor of a Michigan parish that served two dozen families.

His original radio program “The Golden Hour of the Little Flower” and his best-selling newspaper Social Justice both had their roots in Catholic apologetics and devotional materials.

Father Coughlin’s early departures from questions of religion usually involved broadsides against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his longtime bête noire, or lengthy criticisms of the government’s monetary policy, U.S. organized labor and enemies (real and imagined) of the Catholic Church and the United States. His economic and political views led to more than one heated back-and-forth with Father Parsons, the editor in chief of America from 1926 to 1936.

By the mid-1930s, however, he was becoming increasingly political, most clearly in his relentless attacks of President Roosevelt. He courted Benito Mussolini and suggested the two collaborate on questions of state economics; he praised Adolf Hitler’s leadership; he began turning more and more to tired canards about Jewish opposition to Christians in America and abroad—including Germany. He also began to engage in wild conspiracy theories and delusions of grandeur. U.S. General Smedley Butler even told J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that Father Coughlin had tried to recruit him for a venture in which Father Coughlin would raise a huge Catholic army and march south to conquer Mexico (deposing Roosevelt along the way).


His enormous audience meant he could sway the tone of national conversations; some commentators have suggested Father Coughlin was the second most powerful person in the country after Roosevelt himself. The subtle anti-Semitism of his earlier years began to take on a more strident tone in the late 1930s as World War II loomed and his own popularity began to fall: In the pages of Social Justice, he accused Jewish greeting-card manufacturers in the United States of (you knew this was coming, didn’t you?) “taking Christ out of Christmas.”

His fall from grace began in the days following Kristallnacht, the well-coordinated attacks on Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and businesses across Germany in November 1938. Those committing the violence went unmolested, while over 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and eventually sent to Nazi concentration camps. Father Coughlin explained the incident away by noting that Nazism formed as a defense against international Communism, itself a Jewish plot—and so it made sense that Germans would defend themselves against those scheming to destroy their civilization.

Almost the entire Politburo of the Soviet Union was made up of atheist Jews, he claimed. And even if it were true that Germany was persecuting Jews, it was nothing compared to the persecution suffered by Christians in Mexico, in Spain, in the Soviet Union itself. Because U.S. newspapers and radio stations were controlled by “Jewish gentlemen,” he said, the persecution of Christians would never be fully recognized.

“I could have bucked the government and won,” he said. “The people would have supported me.”

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Father Coughlin tried to organize an “army of peace” to march on Washington, D.C., to urge the Roosevelt administration not to change U.S. neutrality laws. The “Friends of Democracy of New York,” an anti-fascist group, accused Father Coughlin of “inciting the American people to riot and civil war” and denounced him as “an enemy of democracy, a disciple of fascism, an advocate of violence, and a purveyor of racial hatred.”

His anti-Semitic rhetoric became more and more charged. International Jewry, he claimed, was run by a secret government descended from the Sanhédrin, who had condemned Christ to death; Jews were in league with Masons and liberals to destroy Christian civilization. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Father Coughlin argued that the entrance of the United States into World War II was part of a conspiracy between the British government, President Roosevelt and the Jewish people. Social Justice also published the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a thoroughly discredited text claiming to reveal a Jewish plot to take over the world.

Radio stations began dropping Father Coughlin’s broadcasts on their own as early as 1940. The U.S. Postal Service also stopped distributing Social Justice because it was “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Father Coughlin charged that his free speech was being restricted (an argument, again, supported by the editors of America at the time), but the clock was running out. In 1942, Archbishop Edward Mooney of Detroit ordered Father Coughlin to stop publishing Social Justice and to remain silent on public matters. Archbishop Mooney also told Father Coughlin he was in danger of being tried for sedition by the federal government for his attacks on Roosevelt—as well as, presumably, his plots to raise an army to attack Washington, D.C., and then Mexico.

Like Father Coughlin, they are aware that the easiest path to power is to wrap oneself up in an American flag...or hold up a Bible.

Father Coughlin accepted his archbishop’s order and returned to the life of a parish priest in Royal Oak, Mich. For the remainder of his life he remained largely out of the public eye, though he continued to write articles and pamphlets against Communism and against the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

In a phone interview two years before his death, Father Coughlin saw himself not as a demagogue or a racist but as a great populist hero. “I could have bucked the government and won,” he said. “The people would have supported me.”

It all sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? But that familiarity comes not just from Rush Limbaugh’s use of similar tropes and tactics. Rather, it is because Father Coughlin represented just one of many demagogues in U.S. politics and culture who have been able to successfully pinpoint our greatest fears, our hidden prejudices and our deepest resentments and thus to sway huge numbers of the populace into embracing seemingly contradictory or openly un-American positions. Like Father Coughlin, they are aware that the easiest path to power is to wrap oneself up in an American flag...or hold up a Bible.

More from America
The mob at the Capitol was reality’s revenge upon the Republican Party

Joe Biden sends a signal that he’s willing to dialogue with the bishops and other faith leaders


James T. Keane is a senior editor at America.
@jamestkeane

Rush Limbaugh died as he lived | Opinion


Rush Limbaugh reacts as first Lady Melania Trump, and his wife Kathryn, applaud, as President Donald Trump mentions Limbaugh during his State of the Union address on

 Feb. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)AP

 By Mary McNamara Tribune News Service

Updated Feb 19, 2021

What is the appropriate response when someone who spent his life attempting to exploit and aggravate the political and social divisions of a nation dies? However the life of a professional divider is cast, any depiction or consideration will be greeted by howls of outrage from one side of that divide or the other.

To his many fans, Rush Limbaugh via his radio program was an early and dependable voice of reactionary conservatism. His raging contempt for any form of progressive politics was their raging contempt for any form of progressive politics. His willingness to insult individuals, particularly women, with terms like “dogs,” “slut” and “feminazi,” was just a gleeful bonus. His ability to spot liberal conspiracy in virtually every cultural and political development was a God-given talent, his willingness to twist fact into falsehood simply a necessary corrective to the liberal agenda that the mainstream media was shoving down everyone’s throat.

To his many detractors, Limbaugh was the devil, a corruptor of minds who catered to his listeners’ darkest impulses, a small star in a dying universe who turned his fortunes around by validating and exacerbating bigotry — a showman who leveraged economic, racial, ideological and geographic differences to create a system of Us vs. Them that damaged families, political parties and this country.

No matter which side you fall on, there’s no denying that Limbaugh was an early architect of the landscape in which every event is refracted through politics, where “fact” can be easily dismissed as “interpretation.”

No matter which side you fall on, Limbaugh paved the way for a baseline of incivility that has been normalized in political discourse.

No matter which side you fall you, Limbaugh helped to turn the public discourse in one of the most diverse and successful nations of the world into a competition between two teams: Red vs. Blue, liberals vs. conservatives. Us vs. Them.

His tools were limited — contempt, anger, outrage — but he wielded them like a master, whipping up fervor in both fan and detractor alike. He hosted, for a time, the most popular talk-radio program on the air, but still it was talk radio, which meant the vast majority of Americans never listened to him. Even so, they knew who he was; Limbaugh baited the mainstream media and the mainstream media bit. Time and time again.

Over the years, Limbaugh’s ratings and notoriety rose and fell with his willingness to be incendiary. Many were enraged by his provocations and pronouncements but only once, when sponsors pulled away after he called college student Sandra Fluke a slut for suggesting that insurance pay for birth control, did he actually damage his brand. And actually apologize.

The notion that conservatives in the greed-powered 1980s needed a voice seemed, to liberals anyway, laughable, given the many already existing conservative pundits, not to mention the continued control of state and federal government by Republicans. “The Rush Limbaugh Show” became syndicated in 1988, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and it’s difficult to understand how the party of Reagan, followed by George H.W. Bush and later his son, could have felt the need for Limbaugh’s voice in particular.

But that is the argument Limbaugh made, and it stuck — in 1994, Newt Gingrich would superglue the Republican Party to Limbaugh’s message and persona by calling the newly GOP-majority House the “Limbaugh Congress.” Limbaugh’s success, at a time when radio was entering what many considered its death spiral, did what all successes do — it spawned copycats. The current combative state of cable news, and indeed the news media as a whole, is the result of many powerful factors, including the very real need to compete for eyeballs, but it is safe to say that without Limbaugh there would be no Fox News and all that its ascendance implies.

What that implies is, among other things, a general, widespread suspicion and fear of the media; the use of false equivalencies in place of actual fairness; the increasing tolerance of reactionary groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis; an over-reliance on opinion and spin, and a common belief, on both sides of the political spectrum, that if you are not with me, you are out to get me.

When, during his early years, he was dismissed by mainstream media as being crazy, Limbaugh did what many successful people do — he leaned into those dismissals and courted the crazy. Like former President Donald Trump, who followed much of Limbaugh’s template, Limbaugh delighted in saying things that no one else would say publicly, much less broadcast on the radio, and his fans delighted not only in the things he said but also in his willingness to say them. In the name of conservatism, he openly exploited the suspicion many people have for government, liberal-leaning government in particular, but he also offered validation for open and latent racism, sexism and homophobia.

More than that, he leveraged the genuine bewilderment many feel as they realize that life is changing in ways they do not like, or that people or circumstances are not quite as they believed them to be, and transformed that bewilderment into rage.

He most certainly benefited from the fact that he was, for many years, something of a lone voice, but he was also very, very good at what he did.

People loved him. Many millions of people.

So what is the appropriate reaction to his death? Exactly what it has been — absolutely and predictably divided along political lines. Conservatives called him a trailblazer, a fighter, a true patriot and the voice of their movement. Liberals called him a bigot, a sexist and a partisan propagandist with a profoundly mean streak. The choice to praise or condemn him has become yet another Rorschach test of political team loyalty; the decision to stay silent has proved equally offensive and obituaries were immediately parsed for, depending on the parser, hypocrisy and bias. Everyone was outraged. Just the way Limbaugh liked it.

In a way, the response to his death was the perfect tribute to his life. One can only hope this divisive final chapter for Limbaugh will end soon and mark, as deaths often do, at least the beginning of the end of an era.

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times.

RIP RUSH LIMBAUGH, WHO SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE ON THE GOVERNMENT DOLE

The hilarious irony at the core of Limbaugh’s life was that his career and wealth were a handout from the U.S. government.


Rush Limbaugh in his radio studio on Jan. 12, 1995. 

Photo: Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images

Jon Schwarz
February 19 2021, 

AFTER RUSH LIMBAUGH died on Wednesday, there was an outpouring of analysis of his impact on U.S. politics. He popularized a hard-right perspective on economics, celebrating the worthy wealthy and pouring scorn on the undeserving poor. Along the way, he amassed a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

What’s gotten no attention, however, is the hilarious irony at the core of Limbaugh’s life: His career and wealth were a handout from the U.S. government.

This is because Limbaugh was a radio broadcaster. The section of the electromagnetic spectrum used for radio is an extremely valuable resource, and different stations in the same area can’t broadcast at the same frequency. This means the federal government has to regulate radio, and grant monopolies in the form of licenses to broadcast at every point on the band. And until fairly recently, the government handed out these licenses — and thereby the opportunity to exploit the radio spectrum — at essentially no cost.

This situation is equivalent to huge gold mines on public land. Imagine if the government simply gave the rights to extract the gold to corporations, and then the corporations hired a contractor to mine the gold, splitting the proceeds with them. The contractor would easily grow stupendously wealthy. But it would be a little hard to take if he constantly lectured everyone else about the nobility of the rich and the dangers of dependence on the government.

Yet this is exactly what Limbaugh did. No. 1 on a Limbaugh list of “undeniable truths”: “There is a distinct singular American culture — rugged individualism and self-reliance — which made America great.” No. 2 on the list: “The vast majority of the rich in this country did not inherit their wealth; they earned it. They are the country’s achievers, producers, and job creators.” Down at No. 27 is “Our cities have not been neglected, but poisoned with welfare dependency funds.”

Limbaugh returned obsessively to these themes for decades, turning them into common sense in the minds of his listeners. “There will always be poor people,” he said, and “this is not the fault of the rich.” He proclaimed constantly that the super-wealthy are not under-taxed, but woefully over-taxed. (The misleading statistics he used are one of the right’s favorite lies.)

For Limbaugh, all of this was a deeply felt issue of morality. “The rich, as you know, are under assault,” he explained. “They are maligned, criticized, ridiculed, impugned, and instead they ought to be held out and up as the role models.” Meanwhile, “There’s no question we have a dependent class in this country, and it’s growing. … These are people who have had their futures taken away from them.”

Limbaugh’s own dependency on the federal government had its roots in the Communications Act of 1934. At the time, radio was a thrilling new invention, much like the internet in the 1990s. Idealists saw it as opening vast new possibilities for public education and edification, and tried to amend the act so it would reserve 25 percent of the spectrum for nonprofit organizations. Corporations had a different view, which was that they should be given the radio spectrum so they could commercialize it and make as much money as possible.

The idealists lost when the Senate rejected their amendment. A previous 1927 bill had stated that each radio station “must be operated as if owned by the public. … It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight with this injunction: ‘Manage this station in our interest.’” The 1934 Act downgraded this language to require that stations should operate for the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” What this meant was largely unspecified, and in any case would almost never be enforced.

Instead, most of the radio spectrum was simply handed over to corporations, for fees so low that it might as well have been free. The broadcast industry then predictably consolidated, especially since it was largely impossible for companies to lose their licenses. Sixty years after the 1934 Act, the Federal Communications Commission did start auctioning off available radio spectrum, but there has always been exceedingly little to auction. All of Limbaugh’s main stations appear to have acquired their licenses decades before the auctions were established.

This government dole made Limbaugh incredibly rich. In 2008, he signed a contract with Clear Channel Communications paying him $400 million over eight years. In 2018, he made $84.5 million. He lived in a Florida mansion worth $50 million and had a net worth at the end of his life estimated at $600 million.

In fairness to Limbaugh, he did work his radio gold mines with skill and verve. In a fairer world, he could have accumulated perhaps 1 percent of his wealth. It is also the case that he is by no means unique. Other radio hosts, the stars and creators of hit broadcast TV shows, professional athletes, corporate media executives — all have grown extraordinarily rich, thanks to the government’s giveaway of the electromagnetic spectrum.

But few have had the gall to gobble down so much public wealth while simultaneously berating the public about their failures and laziness. Hopefully in the future Limbaugh will be remembered not just for the stones he threw, but the fact that he threw them while living in the world’s biggest glass house.

Global mining community is off to the races. Why it matters to the GCC

CORNELIA MEYER
February 20, 2021

Short Url  https://arab.news/vu3ay

The world’s leading mining companies reported their earnings earlier this week. They have been ripping it up: BHP had its best results in seven years; Rio Tinto returned $9 billion to its shareholders, a record in its 148-year history; Fortescue increased its dividend by a whopping 93 percent; and Glencore’s dividend payout is $1.6 billion.

So why did these industry leaders do so well despite the pandemic? What do they have in common? And why does this matter to GCC countries, especially Saudi Arabia?

Firstly, the more exposure each company had to iron ore and China, the better the results. Ninety percent of Rio Tinto’s earnings came from iron ore. Iron ore prices doubled between April 2020 and January 2021 reaching $170/ton on January 11, mainly thanks to Chinese economic growth and the country’s stimulus being geared toward infrastructure.

China has once again been the locomotive behind price increases for commodities. Indeed, JP Morgan hailed a new commodities supercycle, possibly prematurely. The last commodities supercycle lasted from 2000-2008. It was fueled by cheap debt; a low US dollar; and China’s insatiable thirst for raw materials. Things now are both similar and different. Interest rates are lower than ever, the dollar index has lost some 33 percent over the course of 12 months, and China is the only major economy that grew in 2020. It will take more that that, though, for a commodities supercycle to materialize.

China’s GDP grew 2.3 percent in 2020, which is a far cry from its double-digit growth pattern at the beginning of the century. Furthermore, much will depend on whether the IMF forecasts of global GDP growth at 5.5 percent in 2021 and 4.2 percent in 2022 come true. And much of that, in turn, will depend on how countries manage to control the spread of COVID-19. The rollout of vaccines sparks optimism, but that is tempered by the emergence of fast-spreading mutant strains.

Like most other mining companies, Ma’aden would greatly benefit from a global economic recovery, especially as far as its aluminum business is concerned. Unlike most mining companies, however, Ma’aden’s exposure to gold provides it with a natural countercyclical hedge.

The infrastructure and stimulus programs in OECD countries will be a further indicator. The Biden administration’s $2 trillion infrastructure program, if it is passed, would doubtless be a huge boost for commodities.

Energy transition and its linkage to the stimulus programs will be a boost for copper and zinc. Unsurprisingly, the former reached a nine-year high earlier this week.

Mining companies have good reason to be optimistic and they used the good times wisely by paying down debt and raising their CAPEX guidance.

They have also adjusted to the new realities in finance, in which ESG principles are quickly becoming a key consideration in both the equity and debt markets.

BHP is getting out of the thermal coal business and Glencore, which still holds coal assets, has announced that it will adhere to Scope 3 emissions accounting (including the CO2 emissions of its clients in its own targets). Rio Tinto followed suit. Most of the big mining companies have also stated their aim to reach net zero by 2050, if not before.

All of this matters to GCC countries, which are looking to wean themselves off their overdependence on oil, resulting in major infrastructure spending and the establishment of new manufacturing businesses, all of which requires commodities. The new renewables projects or Lucid Motors’ planned EV-manufacturing plant near Jeddah will also require vast amounts of copper and zinc.

The mining companies’ success is of particular interest to KSA, which formed its own mining company, Ma’aden, in 1997. This majority-state-owned company is one of the great success stories in the Kingdom. It is one of the world’s 10 largest mining companies by market capitalization and among the fastest growing globally. Like its international counterparts, its earnings beat expectations last year by vastly reducing its deficit and it paid down debt. Its CEO, Mosaed Al-Ohali, has said he envisages a further debt reduction of between 5-10 percent this year.

Like most other mining companies, Ma’aden would greatly benefit from a global economic recovery, especially as far as its aluminum business is concerned. Unlike most mining companies, however, Ma’aden’s exposure to gold provides it with a natural countercyclical hedge.

Right now, the future looks good for the mining community, but just how bright it will be — and for how long the good times will last — depends on how the global economy emerges from the pandemic.



• Cornelia Meyer is a Ph.D.-level economist with 30 years of experience in investment banking and industry. She is chairperson and CEO of business consultancy Meyer Resources. Twitter: @MeyerResources

Bella Hadid donates 200,000 trees to Peru

Hadid’s generous donation helped to restore 403 hectares of land. 


ARAB NEWS
https://arab.news/8pb6u
February 20, 2021


DUBAI: The importance of trees cannot be understated — not only do they help to clean the air we breathe, but they also filter the water we drink, provide a habitat for hundreds of different species and help combat climate change. This is why many celebrities have made it a habit to donate trees in recent years. Among those is part-Palestinian supermodel Bella Hadid.

This week, the 24-year-old took to Instagram to share a screenshot of an email from One Tree Planted, a non-profit tree-planting organization. The screenshot shows that she had donated 200,000 trees to be planted in Peru.

According to the email, Hadid’s generous donation helped to restore 403 hectares of land that was degraded by unsustainable agricultural practices and will also provide resources for pollinators as well as a habitat for wildlife populations.

“I love You Mother Nature and all that you provide. Thank you (sic),” she captioned the post.

In 2019, the part-Palestinian model announced on Instagram that she would donate 600 trees in a bid to offset the carbon emissions from the many flights she takes while traveling for work, and it appears that Hadid is still concentrating her environmental efforts on planting trees today.

“(I am) donating 600 trees to be planted, 20 for each flight I took these past three months, and probably will continue for the rest of the year,” she wrote on Instagram at the time.

She planted 280 trees in her native California and another 320 trees in the Amazon.

“It makes me sad how much my job affects my carbon footprint and of how brutally climate change is obviously affecting the world,” she continued, “Mother Nature needs some love.”

Hadid isn’t the only major celebrity to take part in the environmental initiative. Other A-listers who have donated to One Tree Planted include Charli XCX and the band Coldplay.

Meanwhile, Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin generously vowed to plant 3,000 trees in the Amazon every time Arsenal won last season, resulting in over 50,000 trees being planted.

Brands are also getting in on the action. Dubai-based unisex label One and Four Studio has pledged to plant a tree for every purchase of its sustainable cotton top.

  

#WARISRAPE

Palestinian child says he was raped by Israeli interrogator


Tamara Nassar Rights and Accountability 19 February 2021
Israeli soldiers in Yatta, a town near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, during a protest on 3 January. Mosab ShawerAPA images

An Israeli interrogator raped a Palestinian child detainee in prison, he told Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP).

The 15-year-old boy, whose identity is known to DCIP but withheld for privacy reasons, gave his testimony to the human rights group.

Israel had placed the boy under house arrest in November 2020.

Israeli occupation forces then took him from his home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiyeh in the middle of the night on 13 January. He was supposed to appear in court on that day.

The experience of a night arrest alone is particularly traumatic for children and their families.

Israeli forces then took the child to the Russian Compound interrogation and torture facility in Jerusalem, where he was handcuffed and blindfolded in a hallway and attacked by passersby.

“Every two to three minutes, someone would come by and slap, push, punch or kick me,” the boy told DCIP.

He said he was then taken to a room where he was interrogated by a man who identified himself as Captain Kamel.

“He kicked me and punched me while shouting and saying I should tell him what I did,” the boy recalled. He was accused of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.

“Whenever I told him I did not do anything, he would beat me harder. He threatened to shock me with electricity, but I told him I did not do anything.”

The boy said that the same individual “knocked him to the floor while blindfolded and raped him with an object,” according to DCIP. The individual threatened to continue with the sexual violence until the boy confessed.

The boy said the individual then pressed him against the wall and inflicted intense pain on his genitals.

“There are no words to describe that moment,” the child told DCIP.

Captain Kamel also threatened that the physical and sexual violence would continue if the boy told his lawyer what had occurred.

Around 15 minutes after the incident the boy was allowed to see his lawyer for five minutes.

He was again interrogated in the hours and days that followed, subject to verbal abuse and forced to sign documents in Hebrew that he did not understand.
Sexual assaults against detainees

While the boy’s testimony is shocking, in recent years there have been consistent reports of sexual threats and violence against Palestinian children and adults by Israeli interrogators.

In 2013, a 14-year-old boy who was detained in the Russian Compound said that an Israeli interrogator threatened to rape him with a broomstick unless he signed a confession.

The same year, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reported that Palestinian children detained at Etzion police station in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank had been habitually tortured and abused, and in some cases threatened with sexual violence.

More than 60 testimonies from Palestinians detained in the settlement between 2009 and 2013, mostly children, included accounts of “severe physical violence,” in some cases amounting to torture.

Twelve of the accounts included claims that an Israeli interrogator “had threatened them or female relatives with sexual assault, such as rape and genital injury,” B’Tselem said.

The nature of the threats and violence also appears to be consistent. The most recent case bears similarity to the account of a 23-year-old Palestinian man in 2007, which appeared in a study published in 2015 by the journal Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters.

“They took off my trousers and underwear and shove[d] a pole into my behind,” the prisoner, whose identity is also undisclosed, told the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) at the time.

“They stopped when someone came in and asked what they were doing,” he added.

“A little later, the officer took me to the toilet, locked the door, sat me down and urinated on my face and body.”

The study looked at PCATI’s database during 2005-2012, and found that 60 of the 1,500 testimonies included accounts of sexual torture and ill-treatment by soldiers, police, intelligence personnel and jailers.

The case of the 23-year-old was the only one reportedly involving rape – with an object – although there were others that included threats of sexual assault or simulated sexual assault.

There were zero convictions related to any of the 60 testimonies – though one case was still pending at the time of writing in 2015.

Sexual violence against detainees is a form of torture, with lasting psychological effects. This form of violence includes verbal sexual harassment, forced nudity and physical sexual assault, according to the journal study.

The prevalence of sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners by their Israeli captors is not fully known.

Additionally, the study relied only on the testimonies collected by PCATI.

Sexual violence remains generally underreported, no less in the case of Palestinians detained by Israel.

Palestinians may be reluctant to give their testimony out of fear of retribution, hesitant to give it to an Israeli organization, or may be discouraged by the stigma attached to being the victim of such violence.

In addition to the dangers and psychological costs of reporting such abuse, there is the scant prospect of receiving any justice even while bearing the emotional, time and financial costs of attempting to pursue a claim.

Such factors are known to discourage reporting of sexual crimes in many jurisdictions, but are particularly acute for Palestinians in a context where Israel’s military investigation system is a fig leaf for the occupation, affording Palestinians no access to justice.
Torture, trauma and intimidation

While Israel’s high court supposedly outlawed torture in 1999, it ruled that the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet can use torture in supposedly rare and exceptional “ticking time bomb” circumstances to investigate Palestinian prisoners.

Torture is absolutely prohibited internationally under all circumstances, and no such exceptions exist.

But Shin Bet has cited the “ticking time bomb” pretext to torture hundreds of Palestinians, according to Amnesty International.

Israel’s “ticking time bomb” loophole was cited by the CIA to justify the US government’s use of torture, a Senate inquiry revealed in 2014.

Ali Abunimah contributed reporting.

Biden says he will listen to experts. Here is what scholars of the Middle East think.

Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami

Friday, February 19, 2021

ORDER FROM CHAOS

Editor's Note:

The Middle East never lacks for commentary and opinions. But what do scholarly experts on the Middle East think? In a piece originally published by the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog, Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami discuss new survey data.


Marc Lynch
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs


Shibley Telhami
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy
ShibleyTelhami

Is the Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution dead? Would a Biden administration decision to return to the JCPOA — the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — reduce the risk of Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb? How important were the Arab uprisings a decade ago, and are they coming back?

The Middle East never lacks for commentary and opinions. Several high-quality surveys regularly ask political scientists and foreign policy experts their views on U.S. policy in the region. But what do scholarly experts on the Middle East think?

Last week, we fielded a unique survey of scholars with expertise in the Middle East, the first of our new Middle East Scholar Barometer. Drawing on the membership of the Middle East Studies Association, the American Political Science Association’s MENA Politics Section and the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University, we identified 1,293 such scholars. The vast majority speak regional languages, have spent significant time in the Middle East, and have dedicated their professional lives to the rigorous study of the region and its politics. Within three days, 521 scholars had consented and responded (a 40% response rate), divided almost equally between political scientists and nonpolitical scientists.

We asked these experts descriptive questions, not what they thought should happen — or would probably happen — in the Middle East. The survey asks for their assessment of the region as it currently exists and might exist a decade hence. It did not ask about their preferences on outcomes or policies.

The results of the survey paint a fascinating picture of the Middle East, and valuable insights that the Biden administration — which has said it aims to take the views of experts seriously — might consider as it crafts U.S. foreign policy for the region.

ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS: A ONE-STATE REALITY AKIN TO APARTHEID

Perhaps the starkest finding of the survey is the collective assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A strong majority, 59%, describes the current reality for Israel and the Palestinians as “a one-state reality akin to apartheid.” An additional 7% view it as a “one-state reality with inequality, but not akin to apartheid.” Only 2% describe the situation as a temporary Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; 30% describe the current situation as semi-permanent occupation by Israel.

While the Biden administration will probably seek to kick-start diplomacy, the experts offer little hope for achieving a two-state solution. In our survey, 52% say that such an outcome is no longer possible, while 42% find it unlikely within the next 10 years. Only 6% consider it probable within the next decade.



Those expectations are especially bleak because without a prospect of a separate Israel and separate Palestine, 77% expect to see a one-state reality akin to apartheid, while another 17% expect a one-state reality with increasing inequality, but not akin to apartheid. Only 1% expect to see a single binational state with equal rights for all.

IRAN AND THE NUCLEAR DEAL

The United States returning to the Iran nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) as it’s currently written would make it less likely that Iran would get a nuclear weapon within the next decade — that’s what 75% of our survey respondents say. And 21% say returning to the JCPOA would make no real difference — only 2% say a return would make an Iranian nuclear weapon more likely.



Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scholars overwhelmingly oppose either military action against Iran or a continuation of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy. The primary divide was over tactics: Sixty-seven percent say the U.S. immediately returning to the JCPOA before addressing other issues would better serve U.S. interests, while 23% prefer first negotiating a grand bargain including ballistic missiles and regional policies in alignment with allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARAB SPRING?

The experts in our survey tended to disagree over the future and the significance of the 2011 uprisings that rocked the Arab world. A majority of scholars say that the uprisings remain active: Thirty percent expect another wave of mass protests within the next decade, while 46% say that the uprisings are still ongoing in different forms. Only 7% think that the uprisings are over and gone, while 17% think they probably won’t recur for at least a decade.

But did they matter? A slim majority, 54%, describe their impact as significant, but not transformational. For 29%, the uprisings were transformational, while 17% view them as a temporary disruption with little long-term impact.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE U.S. AND THE MIDDLE EAST?

Only 3% of the scholars view the United States as stronger in the Middle East today compared with a decade ago, while 75% view the United States as weaker. Quite strikingly, only 38% still view the United States as the single dominant external power in the region. This is not primarily about Russian competition — only 8% see a Cold War-style bipolar region. A slight majority (54%) view the region as multipolar, with a number of great powers competing for influence and power. For those who believe in enduring U.S. primacy, these results should open eyes.



Nor do the scholars see a coming revival of U.S. primacy. Looking ahead, only 10% expect the United States to be stronger a decade from now. This doesn’t necessarily mean precipitous decline: Forty-eight percent expect the United States to be weaker in a decade, while 41% expect it to be about the same as it is now. Intriguingly, scholars do not agree on whether there has been a general decline in the importance of external countries in what happens in the Middle East: Forty-two percent say external powers have about the same amount of influence as a decade ago, 29% say they have more influence, and 28% say they have less influence.

What’s ahead for the Middle East — and the United States? The Biden administration has signaled it would listen to experts, to avoid disasters such as the 2003 Iraq War. This unique survey could help new U.S. policymakers understand the realities of the Middle East as scholars of the region see them.

Bleak future ahead for Suu Kyi and Myanmar

DR. AZEEM IBRAHIM
February 19, 2021



Aung San Suu Kyi attends a special lunch on sustainable development on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 4, 2019. (Reuters)

https://arab.news/bchb7

Aung San Suu Kyi once again finds herself in a set of circumstances that defined her life in the past: Under arrest by the military government of her country. However, this time around, things are very different. She is no longer seen as the global democracy and human rights icon, and few outside of Myanmar will campaign for her release with the energy and zeal they did in the past. And, while she remains popular in Myanmar itself, that popularity remains unlikely to translate into a reversal of the military coup.
The problem with Suu Kyi is that, during her nearly six years in power at the head of the civilian government in Myanmar, she appeared to abandon virtually all the values the world believed she stood for. Head of the list is the way in which she defended the Myanmar military, the Tatmadaw, for its campaign against the Rohingya. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), then proceeded to disenfranchise virtually all of the Rohingya that remained in the country in the lead-up to last November’s general election.

Then, her government kept in place virtually the whole package of laws for the repression of dissent and democratic pluralism that the previous military governments had instituted — from media laws to political association laws and laws defining “threats to the state” so broadly as to effectively disbar most potential rival political forces. The NLD contested the military for control over some bureaucracies of the state and the narrative of who was the legitimate ruler of the country, but it did virtually nothing to open up the state and wider society for genuine democratic development. Rather than rush to build a broad and resilient democratic culture in the country, the NLD focused almost entirely on concentrating any power they could wrest from the Tatmadaw in the hands of only one person: Suu Kyi.

So now Suu Kyi finds herself a victim of her own machinations. That the NLD would have wanted to progressively take more power from the Tatmadaw was perfectly sensible, and the only way to move the country along the path of democracy — but that is the very thing that ultimately prompted the Tatmadaw to stage the coup. By concentrating all the power they wrested from the Tatmadaw into the hands of Suu Kyi, they have left Myanmar’s democracy with a “bus factor” of one: To effectively kill “democracy” in Myanmar, the Tatmadaw only needed to arrest one person.

Democracy in Myanmar never came to mean, and it was not allowed to become, ‘the power of the people.’

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim

It was expected that, following a military coup, the people of Myanmar would rise up to resist the military and overthrow the coup. In the two weeks since the coup, this has not happened. And it has not happened because democracy in Myanmar never came to mean, and it was not allowed to become, “the power of the people.” Democracy in Myanmar only ever came to mean the power of Suu Kyi and the NLD bureaucracy, which responded to her. With them all in prison, there is no democracy left to come to their rescue. There is no “democratic civil society” that can mobilize and organize to resist the military takeover. And that civil society does not exist because Suu Kyi and the NLD were just as resistant to allowing it to develop and thrive as the previous military juntas had been.

So the outlook for Myanmar remains bleak. It will likely remain bleak even if the coup were, somehow, reverted. As for Suu Kyi herself, the prospects are really not very hopeful either. She retains her popularity domestically, but the people of Myanmar have no idea how to organize without her and the NLD in order to bring her back to power. She is likely to languish in isolation for the foreseeable future. She is not yet a spent force politically but, given a few months or years of arrest, as is already planned, and she will be spent. In either case, hopes for the future of democracy in Myanmar no longer rest with her. Democracy will only happen in Myanmar if a new generation of leaders manages to learn from her mistakes and make better decisions next time around.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a director at the Center for Global Policy and author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide” (Hurst, 2017). Twitter: @AzeemIbrahim

The Rohingya are the primary victims of the Burmese military

 Reportage. ‘We estimate that more than 10 percent of people in the camps have disabilities. For many of them, the cause is the repression unleashed by the Burmese army.’

written by Christian Dalenz

• Published on

  February 19, 2021

Kamrul Islam works for the Christian Blind Mission in the camps for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. This Protestant organization focuses on disabilities, particularly eye problems. Kamrul is one of the leaders of the working group for the protection of people with disabilities, in which other NGOs also take part. “We estimate that more than 10 percent of people in the camps have disabilities,” he explains. “For many of them, the cause is the repression unleashed by the Burmese army,” he says.

“In addition to medical assistance, in the past we have also organized social support to teach the deaf sign language and find employment for everyone. We have often managed to reintegrate them into agriculture.” But it is not always easy to help them, because of their reluctance: “Disability is often experienced by the Rohingya as a stigma, as a shame; sometimes they consider it a punishment from God. We always try to explain to them that there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Kamrul can tell us a lot about life in the Rohingya camps. First of all, he explains that there may be many more Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh than the official figures indicate. According to the UNHCR, a little over 866,000 Rohingya are currently in Bengali camps. “Outside these centers, there are many people living in shacks. The total number could therefore rise to 1.2 million people, according to counts made by journalists. I think this estimate could be correct. After all, the Bangladesh administration has great problems identifying its own citizens, let alone the Rohingya.” Before the great wave of refugees in 2017, there were only two camps available; now there are as many as 34, including extensions, all in the Cox’s Bazar area.

According to Kamrul, Dhaka is doing its utmost to assist the refugees. “The government, together with the WHO, is providing general medical assistance. Thanks to the UN, food is being properly distributed. Schooling is provided by UNICEF and various NGOs; often the refugees themselves are qualified to teach. But lessons have been at a standstill since last March, when the COVID emergency began.”

The virus has not broken out too violently in the camps, thanks also to the containment measures taken. At the time of writing, only 387 Rohingya refugees have contracted it since April 2020; among them, ten have died and 46 are currently positive. “But we have to be very careful,” Kamrul explains. “If the virus were to strike with greater force, it would be a disaster, the death toll would rise dramatically.”

However, there are other problems that the Rohingya unfortunately have to live with in the camps. One of them is the fires: “I personally witnessed two of them, one of which destroyed a medical center.” Worse still is the traffic in yaba, a derivative of methamphetamine: “The pills arrive from Myanmar in Coca-Cola bottles. There have been several police operations in the camps to stop the spread of yaba, but I believe that the trafficking activities are still ongoing.”

Kamrul has obviously had the opportunity to meet many refugees and hear their stories. Some of their stories have stuck in his memory. “In the town of Teknaf, in south-eastern Bangladesh, I met a family of 16 Rohingya, consisting of a couple, the husband’s mother and 13 children. They lived on the other side of the Naf river that divides Myanmar and Bangladesh. One morning, they saw that helicopters had started to spray gunpowder on the houses and fire rockets at a village near theirs. They managed to escape to another village, planning their escape to Bangladesh for the next day. They arrived at the river after a 12-hour walk through the hills. Unfortunately, the military found them on the way and killed one of their sons, while another was injured.

A girl gave birth to a baby boy but lost her life shortly afterwards. The survivors paid 50,000 taka, the equivalent of $590, to cross the river. We found them in a tent with no money left to eat, so we helped them.”

U.S. must go ‘well beyond Paris commitments’ to avert catastrophic global warming, warns scientist

PUBLISHED FRI, FEB 19 20218:53 PM EST


Emily DeCiccio@EMILYDECICCIO

KEY POINTS

The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

“We have to ratchet up the commitments now if we are to stay on course to averting a catastrophic three degree Fahrenheit warming,” said scientist Michael Mann.

“The world has moved on from American leadership on climate and will be skeptical of our commitment to stay engaged,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama-Biden Administration.

VIDEO03:11

Michael Mann: ‘We can see the fingerprint of human influence on our climate’

Scientist Michael Mann argued that the United States must go “well beyond those Paris commitments” as President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement Friday.

“We have to ratchet up the commitments now if we are to stay on course to averting a catastrophic three degree Fahrenheit warming,” said Mann, the author of “The New Climate War,” during a Friday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “We have to increase our commitments and the other countries of the world have to do that.”

The move to reenter the Paris Climate Agreement was a departure from the Trump administration’s climate policy. In 2017 former President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the agreement. He formally notified the United Nations in 2019, and the U.S. left the Paris Agreement the following year after a waiting period. Mann explained that during that time, the United States “lost four years of opportunity here to address the greatest challenge that we face.”

Joel Rubin, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama-Biden Administration, told “The News with Shepard Smith” that there’s now a higher bar set for America’s return to the climate battle on the world stage.

“The world has moved on from American leadership on climate and will be skeptical of our commitment to stay engaged,” said the national security expert who worked on both climate change policy and renewable energy programs in the Clinton and Bush administrations. “This has always been the albatross around the American role on multilateral climate diplomacy — a lack of strong legislative support for it.”

Domestically, the crisis in Texas exposed how vulnerable power grids can be during extreme weather, which experts warn could get worse because of climate change. Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall even underscored the danger of climate change during a White House press briefing on Thursday.

“The extreme weather events that we’re experiencing this week across the central, southern, and now the eastern United States do yet again demonstrate to us that climate change is real and it’s happening now, and we’re not adequately prepared for it,” Sherwood-Randall said.

Mann explained that climate change could be a factor contributing to the anguish in Texas amid freezing temperatures.

“There is some evidence that climate change might be leading to an increase in the incidents of these sorts of events, but there is no question that if we look collectively at all of the extreme weather events we’ve seen in recent years, unprecedented heat waves and droughts and wildfires and super storms, we can see the fingerprint of human influence on our climate in these devastating events,” Mann said.

Rubin said that Biden’s next task is to pass legislation to create meaningful change in reducing America’s carbon footprint, so what happened in Texas, doesn’t happen more frequently.

“Doing this would not only be a strong signal to the world that we’re serious, it would also finally break the Gordian knot that has undercut America’s credibility on the global stage when it comes to fighting climate change,” said Rubin. “That’s a necessary political battle. It’s going to be brutal, but the alternative of not having it is much much worse.”